An Informed View of South Africa, Africa and the World

Ines Schumacher’s innocent murderous blacks

I’m pissed because whenever shit happens, fingers are pointed at the black population because, in the views of many white folks, we are the ONLY scumbags capable of committing a crime.

… and white folks are VERY incapable of that. Well, that’s bullshit because Oscar Pistorius has just proved ya’ll wrong. While I support and would not mind going to jail for excising one’s freedom of opinion and expression, it is however one such freedom that harbours around generalised racial tendencies that I would not approve of. I could have written this to the concerned publication’s editor to either take down the article concerned or have the writer thereof get it rewritten but I chose not to. But I could have.

While you attention may be drawn to what is currently underway before the North Gauteng High Court this morning where Oscar Pistorius is on trial for the murder of his now late girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, allow me to divert your attention a bit to a seemingly generalising racist comment I came across this morning written by Ines Schumacher. This is someone who describes herself as a “twenty-something” lady from Johannesburg. While she tells story – like the one that pissed me off this morning – she however “doesn’t take things seriously, except serious things”. Well, Ines, my Sister, I do take racist comments – whether innocent or not – as one of the “serious things” like yours.

Ines said “… there wouldn’t be half as much fuss made if Oscar had killed an unarmed criminal in his home”. Of course there might be plenty such case. However, her claim that “statistically, that criminal would have been black” does smack of the worst (or may be not) racist comment. This, to a reasonable media consumer like myself, reads like: “We white folks know very well that it is only black people that go around into other people’s houses (like Oscar’s?) uninvited and mostly at time to commit crime, including murder”.

I must admit though that after brining myself to reading the whole article, I think the racist comment may have been made innocently but that’s no excuse for stooping that low. This because it perpetuates the already racist perceptions many people have about us black people: that when they see us, they must run because some shit’s going down, that one of them is gonna get mugged and or killed and that they should keep the hell away their pricy belongings because we are going to snatched them away. Gin, like I said earlier, I believe Ines could have done much better than this. And while I cannot tell whether she is the racist many would now think she is, but one thing I know for sure is this: her comment was racist – finish en klaar.

By the way, I chose not to link to her article on Mail & Guardian’s Thought Leader blog titled “And the Oscar goes to hypocrisy” because she said sharing anything related to the murder trial or developments thereof, including tweeting about it – one is “creating [an unnecessary] demand]” that gives the media “the hits they want”. So I’m gonna be the one giving her racist remarks about blacks unnecessary “hits”.